Product offensives, plug-in car forecasts and forthcoming tech

Quick round-up of upcoming electrified vehicles, confirmed, rumoured and otherwise: Porsche – to answer the Tesla Model S challenge, reports Autocar, with an all-electric ‘liftback’ five-door on the Panamera platform; likewise to take on Tesla, a low-roofed crossover-style all-electric Range Rover. Oh, and there are pictures of this Lotus-alike Detroit Electric coupe (£100,500. Forgive me if I don’t get too excited about its significance for electromobility). More significantly, Volkswagen is to launch over 20 EVs and PHEVs in China by 2018, reports Reuters (via Automotive News) – good news for Europe too, what with economies of scale and all that, and getting Beijing to beta-test the tech. These models will encompass everything from small cars to big SUVs. Mercedes-Benz is testing a plug-in hybrid M-Class – spy photos here. And Kia is developing a Prius-rivalling hybrid hatch, the ‘DE’.

Frost & Sullivan reckons London could become a leading market for car-sharing and car clubs; membership could rise to 351,000-plus by the end of the decade, a 2.5x rise on current numbers, with both one-way and round-trip services popular, according to its Vision 2020 report (commissioned by Zipcar).

And speaking of London… Swedish solar/wind-charger-maker InnoVentum is talking with the Mayoral office over bringing its wooden-structure Giraffe chargers (pictured) to London, reports The Engineer (via Zap-Map). Good idea, obviously, to get the city’s EVs charging off renewables, but… aren’t they a bit big? Especially for on-street use? The Giraffe’s an interesting product, anyway – it’s also developed with a view to getting renewable energy to offgrid areas, including those in developing regions, and towers have already been installed in the Philippines.

And you can now get hydrogen in Hendon, at the Sainsbury’s fuel station. The west London store is taking part in the London Hydrogen Network Expansion trial; more here.

A count-up of global plug-in car sales from HybridCars: they’ve reckoned up nearly 604,000 in the Top 10 OECD countries, comprising 356,000-plus battery-electric and nearly 248,000 PHEVs, most arriving on the road since 2010 and with a 20% growth in the last four months alone.

And the latest forecast from Navigant Research: plug-in vehicles to take 2.4% of the global car market by 2023, about 2.5million vehicles a year, with 50% of these sales to luxury brands, but this growth is contingent upon the launch of products in different sectors, including the SUV and (pick-up) truck sectors. Sales of all electrified light-duty vehicles (including non-plug-in hybrids) are expected to reach 5.8million a year, up from 2014’s 2.7million-odd. Handy rundown at Green Car Congress.

Students at Istanbul University have built an EV capable of 500km on a four-hour charge; the T-1 has won a 30-university competition in Turkey and is now touring the country. It weighs 500kg, can do 120kmph and carries four people plus luggage; more here (via Autoblog Green).

The UK’s National Grid is confident that EV drivers won’t be causing any brown-outs this winter and that it has sufficient capacity to support plug-in vehicles, reports Transport Evolved. The demands of plug-in vehicles are now built into its forecasting and its Winter Outlook Report.

TomTom – a leading data provider as well as sat nav-maker – is incorporating weather condition info into its route calculations. This enables route guidance and arrival time estimation taking into account delays and hold-ups caused by heavy rain, snow, etc; useful for EV route optimisation too, I reckon.

On that note, a team at North Carolina State University have developed an algorithm for more accurate range prediction – plugging in data on weather, traffic conditions, gradient and upcoming road type, as well as vehicle-specific data on state of charge and performance characteristics. They’re claiming 95% accuracy, and hope it can help alleviate range anxiety. More, including presentation abstract and academic references, here.

The City of Indianapolis is set to have the largest municipal fleet of electrified vehicles in the US by 2016, reports Green Car Congress. 425 of its non-pursuit police vehicles will be replaced by EVs and PHEVs, including the Nissan Leaf, Chevrolet Volt and Ford Focus Energi.